Snake the Planet: Gaming on Building Facades

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

Are the screens on your phone, computer, or TV just too small for your gaming needs? Enter Mobile Projection Unit, a group working in interactive urban projection mapping. They loaded up a van with everything needed to map out a playable video game against the facade of a building:

MPU takes the classic mobile phone game ‘Snake’ and adopts it for the urban canvas. When ‘Snake the Planet!” is projected onto buildings, each level is generated individually and based on the selected facade. Windows, door frames, pipes and signs all become boundaries and obstacles in the game. Shapes and pixels collide with these boundaries like real objects. The multi player mode lets players intentionally block each other’s path in order to destroy the opponent.

MPU developed “Snake The Planet!” with C++ and Objective-C using OpenFrameworks and the group plans to release the code as open source. [via Hack a Day]

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.